I've made a blog about things internet related with my own flavor and outlook. I try to keep things interesting and fun. A lot of my blogs are about things we talk about every day. I encourage you to take a look.
A former Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader Nik Richie is suing a website for supposedly putting false information about her on their website, thedirty.com, saying that she had relations with a teenager. She is saying that the things posted were inappropriate, false, and embarrassing. What the major story here is what that is going to do free speech on the internet if this case goes through. The link below talks a little but about how big companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Buzzfeed are saying this violates our freedom of speech and will greatly affect how and what people can put on their webpages from here on out. http://news.yahoo.com/internet-giants-weigh-defamation-lawsuit-203545725.html
The article states that the case centers around the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996 to allow websites free speech when their content was posted by their users. This case if passed will change everything. But this law is supposed to encourage websites to self police their website to monitor what is appropriate and what is not.
The article talks about some of the history of mash ups. We tend to think that mash ups is a new art, but in fact its been around for a while. Mash ups started getting popular it the early 60s. Fan of Elvis often did mash ups of his song "Blue Suede Shoes". The art of mash ups has been around for around 50 years. It is interesting that things, such as copy right, still get in the way of artists.
Another misconception is that mash ups are just songs. Mash ups can actually contain a lot of other mediums. John Nelson mashes song with found sound such as laugher or nature sounds or talking in the back ground. All these things can be considered mash ups. Also videos can be considered mash ups. I posted earlier in the year a Mean Girls Clip paired with the animation of Disney movies. A mash up can be an array of things and is not limited to just music.
One controversial aspect of the internet is whether or not it is safe for kids....
They say that children on the internet do a number of things: they play video games and go on social networking cites. They have a lot of freedom on the internet and sometimes when their parents are not looking they can venture on to cites that may be dangerous or harmful.
The above video seems kind of silly, but it is useful. Kids sometimes use the internet more than their parents and not every kid is a bad kid, but sometimes they accidentally navigate onto bad cites. This is again where we have to weigh the positives and negative of the internet, but also learn how to use the internet in the best ways. This has been one of the controversial disputes over the web, but I think it can be solved with just a few simple things.
One would be to get pop up blockers on your computer so that inappropriate things do not pop up. Also another thing would be to monitor your child's computer time. Have the child only use the computer when you are there to watch. Another thing would be to have the computer in a central location like a family room. When I was younger we had our computer in the kitchen so that my parents could monitor what I was doing. My last piece of advice would be to get a cite blocker so that your children could only get on the cites you permit them to. With these few simple things the topic does not become so controversial anymore. There is no need to remove a computer from your children completely!
Time recently posted an article concerning this same topic. it talks about a lot of the things I talked about, but then also cyber bullying. They say this should be one of our top priorities when monitoring children on the internet. A lot of kids now a days get bullied on the internet. It is very easy to hide behind our technology and say things we wouldn't normally say in person and a lot of school bullies are taking advantage of this. The article also talks about how we use our technology to keep our kids safe from technology. This really is ironic and somewhat of a paradox. They say it is important to just not over do it when it comes to monitoring children and to pick and choose battles.
Since this class has had a lot to do with blogging I figured I would share this video on starting a blog incase anyone would want to start their own blog on a topic of their choice. I know I am definitely interested in starting my own.
The above video talks mainly about how to get started. They say to first to pick a platform. So what blog website are you going to choose? They recommend this one: blog spot. I can speak from experience that this is very easy to use.
They also say to pick a topic. They say not to write about what everyone is writing about. They say to pick what you want to write about and it will show in your blog if you are passionate about it. They also say that if you try to sit down and write and you have nothing to write about then you shouldn't write that day.
Their next topic is layout. The girls say that you need to just mess around and figure it out for yourself. They say that the spacing is very important, everything cannot be crammed in there. Also for the background they say typically don't use black and to use white instead. For fonts do not use something to complicated because people cannot read it. For a lot of things on your blog you can Google how to do it. They say that pictures are very important on your blog and engaged your readers. Pictures are a major part of your blogs content! When you blog make the readers blogging experience as enjoyable as possible!
They say it will take a long time. A blog will not get big over time and do not start a blog just to get big. Write because it's something you enjoy. They said it took them over a year. Also join Twitter and you can build relationships with other bloggers. They say not to compare your blog with others blog though, make your blog your own and do not worry about everyone else. A blog is your own personal space on the internet so make it personal.
believe, neptune monologue: Live Tweeting Story: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mbvd/washington-state-woman-unkowningly-live-tweets-her-husbands This article was tragic. It describes a woman who...
I really like the blog believeneptunemonologue! This story is very touching. I think it really shows us how the internet connects us in ways we really never think about. If someone told me this story I wouldn't believe the thing that connected this woman and his husband was in fact Twitter.
This story is very ironic, but past all that it shows us that you can use the internet and social media cites for an array of things, not just telling everyone your latest embarrassing story or what your plans are for that day. This story here shows us, through this woman, that you can use social media cites for more serious things even emergencies. The internet is a great tool we just need to be informed on how to use it.
I think if anything this article relates a lot to what we talk about in class. The internet has so much more capability than we know. It can connect a woman with he husband even though they are not really together. I feel that the internet has its greatest strengths when we use it to its full potential. We talked a lot about the good and the bad with the internet in this class. We talked about how the internet separates us from actual human contact, but I think whether the web is good or bad it really in how we as individuals choose to use it. With this story we can see that the internet has a capacity for good that we sometimes don't even think about!
Great story definitely worth sharing! Thank you for posting.
The above link gives a brief description of the RiP: A remix manifesto. We watched this film in class, but for those of you that have not seen it, basically Brett Gaylor and musician Greg Gillis go into the world of copy right. Gillis is also known as Girl Talk and basically makes his living mashing up songs from other artists. He right now is infringing on copy right, but his argument is that he puts his won creative twists on them. After he gets done with a song they really do not sound like the original artist. The film talks about Walt Disney and on how strict their copy rights are. They have sued people many times for using their cartoons, most of the time Mickey mouse, and turning it into their own work which does not represent the views of Disney. Sometimes I have the tendency to agree with this documentary, but other times I think that copy right is a good thing even when it seems harsh. I know that if I founded a company like Disney and people were making satires of my cartoon I would want the right to make them stop. This film is very interesting and sheds some light on the ways of copy right. There are a lot of things in this video that many people would not know. Definitely a good watch!
Brett Gaylor is not only known for this documentary, he also product manger of webmaker. He talks a little bit about their new features and how their testing them out with MozFest. The above video explains a little about what MozFest does. it created products for Motzilla. He explains how MozFest really in a lot of ways is shaping the internet and how we use the internet. Webmaker he explains is going more and more global. MozFest allows them to try out their prototypes and "build the web that we want."
this wiki page just gives a brief description about Brett Gaylor. He is a Canadian documentary filmmaker. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia right now. He is currently working with the Mozilla Popcorn project. Before he worked as a member director of EyeSteelFirm, which is documentary film company. He also founded the Open Source Cinema project. These are just a select few of the things Bret Gaylor has accomplished so far so one can see he has been very busy. He has received several honors and awards. one of his greatest was that his documentary RiP: A Remix Manifesto was shown at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam!
This wiki page talks briefly about Bret Taylor's career. He was co-creator of GoogleMaps and the Google Maps API. Then he left Google in 2007 and started working for venture capital firm. He formed the social network FriendFeed and was CEO until it was bought out by Facebook. He worked for Facebook as well until he left to form his own company. Bret Taylor also keeps up the Tornado web server. He attended Stanford University where he earned a bachelors and masters degree in computer science.
This is a link to Bret Taylor's blog. Bret blogs at lot about his companies Tornado and FriendFeed. He blogs about the Web stocks in his company Tornado. He also about new technology developments. He mainly blogs about experiments with his companies and on the internet.
The above link talks about Bret Taylor's venture with his new company Quip. He co-founded this with Kevin Gibbs who used to work at Google on their data center. Quip allows its users to combine documents and messages into a single medium. it allows you do to this from your phone or your desktop. The below photo shows you how this would work on your phone. The mobile aspect is the primary focus for Quip, while it doesn't neglect the desktop.
As the end of the semester draws close, I decided to do a few updates so I could leave my blog lookin' fresh. I went back and updated things from the beginning of the semester when I didn't know how to do everything. I went back to the posts you commented on and added pictures to some on my blogs and also embedded videos in the blogs where I just had a link. I also changed my blog where I talked about how many blog views I had and added exactly where I got my blog traffic. I added a little more to some of my other blogs usually just a paragraph or so. I know a little bit more about the things I blogged in the beginning of the semester so I thought it would be good to expand on some of them.
I also changed the layout of my blog. I changed the width of my tool bar and blog space. I also changed up my font. I thought it would be good to freshen up the look of my blog. I also changed the header of my blog and I added a brief description with what my blog is all about. These are just a few changes I added to my blog to make sure I left it on top!
In honor of the wiki wars were about to have coming up I decided to go and practice some. I figured out that the best way to get to the links faster is sometimes by random clicking. If you think something won't lead you off on totally the wrong track then just click on it. Also the ctrl f sometimes does slow you down. Sometimes I would look for a word on the page and unable to find it, wasted a whole lot of time.
Here's some one of my routes. I tried to go from Sand Dollar to Egypt here was my route: Sand Dollar Sea Cucumber Class Taxon Biology Egypt
I really did not think a lot with this one. The first couple clicks were pretty random and then I got strategic towards the end. Also this video below is two people having a wiki tournament. Its kinda funny and useful because you get to see their strategies.
The following video explains an app that allows you to fake people call you. The video goes into much detail explaining how you can control when they call you, how many fake calls you get, and who calls you. The app comes with built in voices and allows you to record your own voices when you answer the phone. I think this is a very bizarre app, but it could get you out of a lot of unwanted conversations!
Those that say that technology has made us socially lazy would have a field day with this. They would say that this app conveys our culture slipping away from personal contact because this app is basically for avoiding talking to people we don't want to see.
Ho Ho holy dolla signs!$!!$$! Isn't that what we all think when we try to buy our loved ones technology related Christmas presents? Well it doesn't HAVE to be that expensive. The about video shows some digital accessories that are not very expensive...under 50 dollars! some of these things are Netflix gift cards or a chrome USB cable that allows you to watch videos from your phone on your TV. Just thought these were a few internet related gifts you should know about!
This is one of my favorite videos from the blogs. The video shows us how real technology can make things look. Think about how much we have advanced in the last 50 years! This would not even be possible then. To think with just a TV that we put in our homes we can create this affect is astonishing... these people were running for their lives in fear. I just like the way this advertisement shows us in a funny realistic way how far technology has come. This probably was not the main focus the advertisement, as it was most likely to get the viewers to buy an HG TV, but it makes me think about our advancements.
It has been steadily getting more real to me that the semester is ending and my blogging on all things internet related will soon be over. I really did not think it would be this hard, but it will take some serious weekly therapy and paired with heavy drinking to mask the pain. Without the task of two blogs by Sunday at midnight my life will simply appear empty ad meaningless. It is true what they say... "you don't know what you have till it's gone." I really didn't know the joy that blogging on Tim Berners Lee and the affects of Twitter on young adults would bring me, but... here I am. I've truly grown as a person with this blog. I remember the days when I didn't know how to embed a video... ha I was just in the infancy of my blogging years. And then when I finally learned how to make a link work correctly... those were some of the best days of my short blog life. To all my fans in Malaysia, where most of my blog views have come from, thank you... you guys are what keeps me going.
To all the new bloggers out there the little advice I can give you is to never give up...keep on top of yo blog homie! Love the blog life you live. Blog you, baby girl, what you like! I would have to say that the peak of my fame was on Sunday, October 6, 2013...a day that will live in infamy! I got two comments and nine views on my blog post of about movie Her! Moral of the story, go see that movie.... and blog about stuff people like talking about. No one likes to read dry blog posts they wanna read about stuff that interests them...not the stuff that makes them pound their head on the space bar in boredom. Follow the assignments, but add your own little flava to it! You got this!
And for now I will let my girl Whitney take it away...
A World of Reposting,
Sharing, and… Copy Right Protection?
We live in a world
where information, pictures, and videos can be shared at the click of a button.
This is a world where things are liked, reposted, and favorited minutes after
uploaded. We live in a world where private is a dirty word and where all our
information is public. Our world is one where a single person’s intellectual
information can reach thousands. One would think this would think this is a
great world we’re living in, and it is, but there this growing idea that our
intellectual information needs protection. Sometimes there is too much
protection and the rest of the world cannot benefit from our ideas. That is
where Creative Commons comes in. It is a non-profit organization working to find
a balance in-between strict copy right laws and free public use. Creative Commons
is fast growing and used by some of the most widely known companies today. Its
easy to understand licenses make the organization also accessible to the common
individual and I believe its share-alike license is one that we should model
many more copy right licenses after.
The
Creative Commons organization was founded in 2001, but the first set of copy
right licenses weren’t released until December 2002. The organization was
founded by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred with the help of
Center for the Public Domain (Creative Commons Wikipedia). It is now run by a
board of directors and composed of entrepreneurs, experts, philanthropists, and
legal scholars to name a few (History- Creative Commons). Molly Shaffer Van
Houweling, Glenn Otis Brown, Neeru Paharia, and Ben Adida were some of the
people responsible for developing the licenses and infrastructure of Creative
Commons early on (Creative Commons Wikipedia). In 2003 there were approximately
one million licenses under Creative Commons and by 2008 it was estimated that
Creative Commons held 130 million licenses under their name (History- Creative
Commons). It is an organization that grew quickly and is still growing to this
day. Their licenses have been greatly improved upon and imported to over 50
jurisdictions (History- Creative Commons).
The
purpose of the Creative Commons is basically for individuals or companies to
choose how much or how little of their intellectually information that they
want under copy right. This is an alternative to the broad “all rights
reserved”. Creative Commons allows the licensor to keep their copy right, but
grant the public the right to share, copy, and use their work non-commercially
(About the Licenses). This organization works alongside the copy right to allow
licensors to “decide how they want their work to be used” (About the Licenses).
Creative Commons is somewhat limited though. The licenses do not influence the
freedoms given by the law to the users of creative works. Creative Commons
depends on the permission from the licensor to allow the user to do anything
that the law reserves exclusively to the licensor (About the Licenses). CC
cannot go around the law, but it can help to bridge the strict copy right laws
with a license that is more lenient. The video below explains how CC allows us to make a choice about how we want to share our work.
A
Creative Commons copy right license comes in a three layer design. The first is
called the “Legal Code”. This is “in the
kind of language and text formats most lawyers know and love” (About the
Licenses). Unfortunately, the normal person does not understand this; for that
the organization includes the Common Deeds layer. This layer summarizes the
most important items within the contract in ways that people can understand.
The last layer is in a format easy for the machine to read. This is the layer
that allows software systems and search engines to understand. This three layer
system insures that the license is “something that the creators of works can
understand, their users can understand, and even the Web itself can understand”
(About the Licenses).
A
few of the big users of Creative Commons are Al Jazeera, Flickr, and Google.
Jazeera used CC so that they could post footage of the Israeli/Palestine
conflict. Most Western Media did not have the access that Al Jazeera had (Who
Uses CC?). Their footage was then more effective and eye-opening and now users
can freely use it as long as they give permission to Al Jazeera. The link below shows a video that explains Al Jazeera's inspiration by Lessig to make their content open to the public with CC. Flickr also
has a Creative Commons License so that their users can upload and share other users’
images. There are now over 200 million users, making Flickr the largest amount
of licensed content (Who Uses CC?). Google uses CC in a variety of ways, one
being that they allow their users to CC-license their own work through them.
Also, YouTube, which is owned by Google, has added a CC licensing option for
video uploads (Who Uses CC?). This shows that a lot of well-known companies use
CC and for a variety of different reasons, but overall to balance the amount of
control the public has over their intellectual property.
Creative
Commons has many types of licenses such as attribution, non-comercial, and no
derivative works, but the one I fine most accessible is share-alike. According
the Creative Commons website under this license you are allowed to, “share,
copy, and redistribute the material in any medium or format, as well as adapt,
remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even
commercially”(Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic). The user must give credit to
the creator though. They must also give a link to the license agreement and
express if any changes have been made. Also, if the user makes any changes they
must put up their work under the same conditions/license as the original
creator (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic). In summary the user can use the
creators work in any way they choose as long as they give credit and allow
others to use their newly created work in the same way. Personally I feel this
is the fairest license. This allows the creator to keep their copy right
because they still get credit for their work, but also allows others to benefit
from their work. This copy right enables users the share the creators work, but
requires them to let others to freely use their work as well. I feel this is
basically how our internet works today and is the most familiar template for
the public to work off of.
We live in a world
where mass amounts of information, videos, and pictures are at our fingertips.
This is a world where people can popularize their ideas with the touch of the
upload button. We live in a world where copyright is a dirty word and sharing
is preferred. We live in a world where we want our ideas to be known and used,
but also protected. Creative Commons allows this once paradox to become a
possibility. Many companies, organizations, and individuals take advantage of
CC’s easy to understand, flexible version of copyright. Creative Commons is
helping us toward a world that allows the mass circulation of ideas to be
shared, used, and built upon, while still keeping copy rights. This is truly
the best of both worlds!
